All together now! – Chap. 6, Act 4, Strip 97

First he manages to get going without any of the motivation he vainly tried to muster in the last strip – helped, of course, by the fact that he’s used to keep going despite a lack of motivation. It’s kind of the story of his life. ._.

And then he makes – by chance*! – a startling and possibly life-changing discovery! He finds out that attacking with all of his mecha-kaiju’s weapon systems at once is a lot more effective than employing them one-by-one! Which seems kinda obvious, especially with the benefit of hindsight, but goes against everything he’s ever seen or been taught about kaiju conflicts. He’s always just unthinkingly followed the rules (another habit of his), which clearly mandate using your weapons one after the other in a gradual escalation. He’s been doing it wrong all this time!

Clearly, he hasn’t read his Clausewitz carefully enough! See my remarks regarding Lt. Watnabe (Snuka Mk.3). But it wouldn’t even have taken a careful study of that classic, he could just as easily learned that lesson from observing button-mashing videogamers.*

More on Thursday.

* He slipped.

** His best chance being probably Toji, whom I’d put down as that type of player with great confidence. Aida probably plays more tactical, Asuka mashes the whole controller and eventually the console, and Rei just looks at the buttons. XD